8 ms·

The Road to Luna

68 points by macco 13y ago

acqq 13y ago
How can they name their mostly visual customizations of the existing projects "OS" and be accepted as serious? Such things were called skins and themes. What is really original there apart from the visual design elements and the UI customizations to allow them calling their contribution an "OS"? Just that they actually write some code? Where are their own kernel and their own drivers? Aren't they just one more derivative GNU/Linux distro?
- aroman 13y ago
  So by that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS. That's fine if you want to say that, but you have to understand what that actually means. As for differences beyond the "visual", we wrote our entire desktop environment and a number of our apps from scratch. We did't just skin things and make opinionated decisions about design. We actually write code (apps, libraries, our DE), as this article expresses. Full disclosure: I am an elementary team member and I helped edit the linked article.
  - acqq 13y ago
    By that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS. Exactly, it isn't. Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, they are all distros. The real OSes are Unix, VMS, Plan 9, BeOS, Minix, Windows, GNU/Linux, BSD, OSX and Android. Making some user space applications or libraries don't make you OS authors. And I don't understand why you guys are hurt when I say that. And why you are not open about what you're actually doing. Maintaining a distro is not a small thing though, so I'd like to see how serious you are in that aspects. What are your upstreams? What are your release policies and schedules? Update schedules? Verifications? Quality assurance? How many people do you have in charge of all that? I see you've had one release which you call yourself "Ubuntu 10.10 remaster," and now you prepare for second based on... what? I see you make your own patches of Nautilus. Once you accept you're a distribution you can be realistically compared to others.
    - Kurtz79 13y ago
      "Ubuntu: The world's most popular free OS" http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer." http://www.debian.com/ http://www.debian.com/
      - acqq 13y ago
        It's like calling the specific desktop computer "a CPU." Some people do this too. It's just wrong. If I plug the pieces together in a workable machine it doesn't mean I've made a CPU, even if I've painted the box myself. Note the name is Ubuntu, not "Ubuntu OS." Debian and not "Debian OS." I wouldn't have problem if the product is just named "Elementary" and described as a Linux based OS distribution, once they have a release policy (before it's just a Linux based release). Having OS in the name means a new OS, and it simply and plainly isn't.
        Kurtz79 13y ago
        I'm not sure I agree. I could be said that "Windows", "OSX", "GNU/Linux" are not really "Operating Systems", intended as software products that you can install on a machine. Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 and yes, Elementary, are. You don't download a specific "GNU/Linux" OS, you download an OS (intended as a software product made up of kernel+file system+desktop environment) that is based on that technology. The word "distribution" is something that was created for Linux given its specific nature. Yes, if we stick to the classic CS definition of OS maybe you are right, but I believe that Ubuntu, Debian and Elementary can rightfully call themselves "OS"s without issue.
        acqq 13y ago
        Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 are all specific releases, not the new operating systems. Elementary isn't, too. It is not even a distro until it has clear release and update policies. Otherwise you'd consider any skinned ISO of any existing OS a new OS, and that's just wrong. "Hello all, I'm making one new OS in my basement every week!"
  - jerryr 13y ago
    Throwing around "OS" used to bug me too. Even Android runs on top of Linux. So, is Android really an OS? A distribution? It seems like something more than a distribution--Android contributes drivers and patches to the kernel. But it's still Linux under there. I finally stopped caring and accepted that "OS" has evolved for most end users to mean a user experience, an ecosystem of applications, a hardware support list, and a technical support strategy. For many developers, it's now the set of tools, services, and paradigms available for development along with an understanding of the number and types of users that can be reached by supporting it. These definitions span the classical distinctions between Operating System, distribution, and even sometimes application. In my line of work, I can communicate clearly with the majority of my customers by referring to things like Android and eOS as "OSes". It's what they expect and I'm okay with that. Congrats on the launch of Luna.
    - acqq 13y ago
      They use it like OSX and iOS which rightly have OS in their name: both are the new and original operating systems. Debian, Ubuntu rightly don't have OS in their own names. Elementary shouldn't too.
      - arjie 13y ago
        Poor choice of examples, mate. From the respective home pages: 1. "Ubuntu is the world’s favourite free operating system" - ubuntu.com 2. "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run." - debian.org Then you have CentOS and their ilk. But that whole argument is irrelevant: take a step back and look at what you're arguing about. It is such a petty argument. I feel like I'm living in a crazy house where trivial things are important.
      - neeee 13y ago
        OS X is a distribution of Darwin. iOS is derived from it.
  - subway 13y ago
    What was the motivation behind forking the distro rather than building packages and an apt repo for Debian or Ubuntu? This is certainly a neat desktop environment, but it always makes me sad to see things done in a manner that makes it difficult to use with other distros.
    - aroman 13y ago
      Money, time, and experience. All of these things have changed since over the past year or so, and there's been a lot of internal discussion about moving to Debian. In fact, it's almost sure to happen for Isis+1 (Isis is the name of our next release). Basically, setting up our own repo took really good packagers (we have them now, and you can also get pretty much all of our software from Gentoo and Arch), running our own repo required a solid and cost-effective server (we have this now), and forking let us inherit a LOT of stuff we didn't have the resources to customize back then. As we grow, it seems only natural that we base less on Ubuntu. But a lot of us used to be Ubuntu developers/enthusiasts, and a bunch of us have good ties to the Ubuntu ecosystem (a number of us met up at UDS-O), etc. So, tl;dr, it will happen soon enough :)
      - happy-dude 13y ago
        I must give you a heads up about moving over to Debian: currently, Debian installers do not have the option to format or install onto a BTRFS partition. (Nor does Fedora's installer, without difficulty. Ubuntu's does though.) This matters to me because I was recently checking out an interesting installation method that allowed me to do away with Linux partitions by solely using BTRFS subvolumes. (If you look at the IRC chat logs of #btrfs, #archlinux-newbie, and #elementary, I was btrfs-newbie trying it a few days back.) As of now, I am nearly done with my laptop set up, and I am happily running Arch Linux and elementaryOS with a shared /home subvolume all under the same BTRFS partition. This is a really neat feature that I could take advantage of in the Ubuntu installer (Ubiquity, was it?). I did not have this issue on Arch because Arch's installation method was practically a chroot and create the filesystem and package structure in the proper places. Please keep this in mind when moving forward. It would be interesting if you can maintain that aspect in your next release, Isis. Thanks so much for your time, and keep up the amazing work!
- macco 13y ago
  What you saying is just. End users donwload operating systems and the know what a distro is. Who are you, to define what a operating system is?
- kunai 13y ago
  "Apple. How can they name their mostly API-level visual customizations of the existing projects "OS X" and be accepted as serious? Such things were called skins and themes. What is really original there apart from the visual design elements and the UI customizations to allow them calling their contribution an "OS"? Just that they actually write some code? Where are their own kernel and their own drivers? Aren't they just a derivative BSD/Mach distro?"
  - acqq 13y ago
    If you ever looked at Darwin and compared it with any other kernel, you'd know it's a serious, big real OS work, far from any "UI" you mention. Reading what you wrote, however, I don't believe you did something like that, or even that you'd be able to. I see there's no point arguing in such case.
    - kunai 13y ago
      Darwin was created using portions of FreeBSD's kernel and the work done for Mach at Carnegie Mellon. It's not Apple's sole creation in the slightest.
    - SkyMarshal 13y ago
      That's how OS X is now, after ~10 years of closed development. When it first started it was open source FreeBSD and Mach. I even remember the FOSS community's disappointment when Apple close sourced the project. Who knows how eOS will look in ten years, and the state of OS X now is certainly no basis for criticism of brand new OS.
cransa 13y ago
Elementary OS looks like a OS X knock off. Which is a shame, in my opinion. They say they reached the same conclusion as Apple's designers, but I think they just have a bias. They should be taking inspiration from apps like Fantastical, Soulver, etc. and building in those concepts to the O.S. They should try and set themselves apart from OS X. It just looks too similar. Remember what Picasa said: "Good artist copy. Great artist steal." Elementary OS is just copying. They should be stealing. I'd love to see something along the lines of this Dribbble shot, honestly. http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-Concept/attachments/44311 http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-Concept/attachme...
- foolrush 13y ago
  While I agree with your premise that Elementary is nothing more than a repetitive clone of a well trodden trope, I could not disagree more with the "steal" aspect. Instead, I would suggest that any further designs should drop the privileged terms of "intuitive" and other such rubbish[1] and instead focus on designing a system that specifically meets the needs of a very particular demographic / audience. Finally, there is little to no evidence to suggest that Picasso said that infamous line. It was likely misattributed by Mr. Jobs from a biography. It is instead a mangling of the words of T.S. Eliot[2] that seriously detracts from Eliot's original (and relevant to this discourse) intention. [1] http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-metaphor http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-metaphor [2] http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-poets-steal/ http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borro...
tuananh 13y ago
For those saying Elementary OS isn't a blatant copy of OS X. Just look at those icons in the dock.
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  "Good artists copy, great artists steal." So by Steve Jobs (and Picasso's) own definition, the eOS guys are merely good, not yet great. They've still got some catching up to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
  - kunai 13y ago
    That quote isn't actually Picasso's. It's T.S. Eliot's, and it goes, "Good poets borrow, great poets steal."
    - graue 13y ago
      That's not quite what Eliot said either. From elsewhere in this thread, 'foolrush points to this: http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-poets-steal/ http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borro...
  - tuananh 13y ago
    mere copying: i called theft.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
I like the idea of a new competitor in this space, however I was a bit disappointed in their direction. Not sure of others but I don't need another gnome3-like (dumbed-down, grandma-friendly, immature paradigm, rather be a tablet) interface. These linux-based desktops will never be popular; that ship sailed long ago. However, I desperately need a professional, stable, feature-complete, mostly bug-free workstation GUI with modern capabilities at least as good as Win2000/XP, Irix, NeXT like I had 10+ years ago. Something like Xfce polished to OSX-level quality. If one of the design-goals is that "menus are too difficult" there is no market available for that product. The people that would benefit use Windows, OSX, iOS, and Android already.
- tikhonj 13y ago
  It seems like KDE already handles your needs: it's well-integrated, stable and has all the modern capabilities you could want. Certainly far better than XP! I've used KDE a fair bit, and the recent versions have been superb. Sure, it's heavyweight compared to some of its bare-bones competitors, but that's the only way to fulfill all your conditions. Of course, the truly "professional" choice would be XMonad layered over something minimal. But that's a different discussion for a different time :P.
  - mixmastamyk 13y ago
    It would seem so. Unfortunately, I've given it a try every other year and have been disgusted every time. The technology is nice, but it feels like it was designed by 90's IT guy. Clutter and programmer-art is not what I am looking for either.
  - bobjor 13y ago
    KDE at least the versions I have used have a bunch of little annoyances that just break usage for me. Mostly having to do with things like KWallet integration or other little pieces not working properly. I've used workstations that still run Windows 95/2000 for machines and they work great but KDE 4 leaves me missing its 3.x variant. XFCE could probably be a viable replacement though, it is familiar and easy to use it just has its little gotchas as well (which are more annoying on a laptop than a desktop though).
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
MWil 13y ago
I emailed support a question and never received a reply back. Using Geary, once deleted/archived, emails almost always come back. Sometimes, they come back after several attempts.
- aroman 13y ago
  Hi, I'm on the elementary team. I'm not sure how exactly you "emailed support" because we don't have a support email address, but I would encourage you to check out our support landing page here: http://elementaryos.org/support http://elementaryos.org/support and specifically search/ask a question here: http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest If nobody seems to have a conclusive answer for you (mind you, Geary is not an app we wrote in house, so there's liable to be less Geary developers hanging around our support channels), I'd ask you (on behalf of the community) to report a bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary Thanks :)
joleX 13y ago
It's a really cool OS. The only thing I don't like is that they force their own applications. I always install Firefox and Thunderbird, and then it's a real thing.
- quarterto 13y ago
  So installing something by default is forcing it on people now? It's still Linux.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Myrth 13y ago
    > So installing something by default is forcing it on people now? Only for Microsoft.
MisterWebz 13y ago
A lot of people here fervently complaining about eOS again. The most important thing is that there's finally a linux distro with a team behind it that really cares about design. I think it's a huge step forward, and when eOS gains in popularity, I hope other teams follow in their footsteps. No, distros like Linux Mint aren't the right way forward. Stripping off everything until what you have left is a taskbar isn't exactly my idea of good design.
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  Completely agree. Their focus on design as all of how-it-looks, how-it-works, and performance-is-a-feature is very promising for a Linux Desktop, as are the hard work and sacrifices they're willing to go to get that - rewriting everything in Vala and GTK3 namely. Their app-data-sharing component, Contractor, is also interesting. I've had at least one idea I wanted to try in the past but couldn't figure out how to implement it b/c apps are not aware of other running apps. I wonder if Contractor will make that possible. These guys have created a really strong base to build upon, and appear to be innovative problem solvers. They're also tuned into the problems of power users, referencing the whole Gnome2/3 brouhaha. Really looking forward to seeing how this develops, and to it getting to a point I can completely replace Ubuntu desktop with it.
- mmastrac 13y ago
  I'm glad to see that the top comment is a positive one. I haven't personally used eOS, but I'm also glad to see they are focused on usability and design. I switched from a decade of Linux to OSX a few years ago and have been pretty happy with my choice - OSX is unix-y enough, and tends to just get out of the way when necessary (some of Apple's more recent Gatekeeper changes withstanding). In the meantime, I'm disappointed that Hacker News commenters continue to bring out constant negativity against new projects. What happened to original HN ethos that celebrated people _doing things_? Seriously: if you feel like you have to complain about somebody's hard work, try being constructive and giving feedback, or not commenting and just doing it better instead.
- pekk 13y ago
  "Cares about design" implies that there is one optimal design for everything (perhaps Apple's). But a lot of design is very subjective. Actually there are multiple distros which care about design, but they have different ideas about what to try to optimize for.
aroman 13y ago
As much as it brightens my day to see a project I worked on (I'm actually the guy who filmed that video in the article) make it to HN's front page, it also makes me sad a bit. It makes me sad because of the usual troupe of folks who complain that we don't have the right to go around calling ourselves an "OS", we don't bring anything original or innovative into the world, or that we are plainly just OS X clones. I was extremely active on the thread[0] posted to HN when Luna launched (which was at #1 for the better part of that evening), but I don't think I'm going to do that same level of in depth responding here. Instead, I'm simply going to leave you a link to the below article[0]. Please read my comment if you want to understand how we as elementary evaluate and understand our design process and the criticism which seems to come with it. Thanks for listening. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148
- SkyMarshal 13y ago
  I can't imagine that people making those silly comments have 1) RTFA, or 2) done anything remotely like what you guys are doing. You guys are doing some amazing things with the Linux desktop, don't let the peanut gallery get you down. PS - I fervently hate the word "exciting" and think it is by far the most overused and diluted word in contemporary US English these days, at least in the business and startup realm. Too many people seem to think that calling something "exciting" actually makes it so, and call everything they want investment or traction for "exciting". Almost none of it actually is. eOS is one of the few exceptions. The first project I've seen where reading your blog posts about it feels like reading folklore.org, and for a Linux fan at least, truly is exciting. So please keep doing what you're doing, ignore the negative nancies.
- agumonkey 13y ago
  I have yet to test it, but having seen the video, "haters" probably lack knowledge about desktops, user interface or simply history (how many desktop systems have been made that lacked the integration, speed and polish ?). Hoping you don't take it too hard and keep on experimenting and growing.
- macco 13y ago
  You should simply be proud, to have this endurance, to bring Luna to the masses. I don't agree on everything you did, but I really appreciate what you did. And you design consideration about how applications should interact with the users are ground breaking - at least a bit. Sending minimize to hell is a smart move. Kudos
phpnode 13y ago
sickening to see the negativity here, I just bought a copy because this thing looks great and because I want to support the team.
lists 13y ago
Why do you guys make a big deal of Contractor in the article when actual development of the service is rather neglected looking at your milestones for your next release's beta[0] and Contractor's revision history[1]? On your mailing list you guys are already getting ready to update your Ubuntu Precise base to a more recent release[2], but why? Precise is stable and will be continue to be so long enough for you guys to spend time developing the developer-facing treasures of your platform, and yet it seems you're a little too focused on user-facing niceties. Or maybe the better question is when will you guys sit down and start making the stuff that'll entice third-party developers? Let me know if I'm getting things confused, I'm actually a big fan of the project. [0]: https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-beta1 https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-beta1 [1]: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor-dev/contractor/trunk/changes http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor-dev/contractor/trunk... [2]: https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-community/msg02577.html https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-community/msg0257...
- munchor 13y ago
  Hi, I'm one of the devs. Regarding Contractor, its big proponent is on vacations and we still need to move some of the blueprints about it to the appropriated milestones. In fact, we still have to report many bugs about it, but in time I'm sure it'll be done. Regarding the new release, we get a lot of criticism from all kinds of users saying they want us to be based on a more modern version of Ubuntu and as so, we plan to be based on 14.04 for next release. We aim to release shortly after Ubuntu 14.04 comes out and that's the plan we're sticking to. I'm sure 14.04 will be just as stable, we can't be stuck in the past and moving is a lot of work - we need to start working on it as soon as possible! Besides, we also need many new GTK+, Vala and other libraries' features.
sremani 13y ago
Even though the comparisions to OS X seem inevitable due to the launch bar, I like the snappiness of the OS, and one of the few distros I felt playing around. I am a primary windows user, who tinkers and plays around with Linux and OS X, I definitely like the OS. My wireless drivers being proprietary could not work with Luna, so as much as I want to have Luna - I could not use on the old laptop, but I will definitely consider installing it on my VM. Crunchbang and Luna are the distros I am liking.

68 points by macco 13y ago

acqq 13y ago

How can they name their mostly visual customizations of the existing projects "OS" and be accepted as serious? Such things were called skins and themes. What is really original there apart from the visual design elements and the UI customizations to allow them calling their contribution an "OS"? Just that they actually write some code? Where are their own kernel and their own drivers? Aren't they just one more derivative GNU/Linux distro?

aroman 13y ago
So by that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS. That's fine if you want to say that, but you have to understand what that actually means. As for differences beyond the "visual", we wrote our entire desktop environment and a number of our apps from scratch. We did't just skin things and make opinionated decisions about design. We actually write code (apps, libraries, our DE), as this article expresses. Full disclosure: I am an elementary team member and I helped edit the linked article.
- acqq 13y ago
  By that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS. Exactly, it isn't. Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, they are all distros. The real OSes are Unix, VMS, Plan 9, BeOS, Minix, Windows, GNU/Linux, BSD, OSX and Android. Making some user space applications or libraries don't make you OS authors. And I don't understand why you guys are hurt when I say that. And why you are not open about what you're actually doing. Maintaining a distro is not a small thing though, so I'd like to see how serious you are in that aspects. What are your upstreams? What are your release policies and schedules? Update schedules? Verifications? Quality assurance? How many people do you have in charge of all that? I see you've had one release which you call yourself "Ubuntu 10.10 remaster," and now you prepare for second based on... what? I see you make your own patches of Nautilus. Once you accept you're a distribution you can be realistically compared to others.
  - Kurtz79 13y ago
    "Ubuntu: The world's most popular free OS" http://www.ubuntu.com/ http://www.ubuntu.com/ "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer." http://www.debian.com/ http://www.debian.com/
    - acqq 13y ago
      It's like calling the specific desktop computer "a CPU." Some people do this too. It's just wrong. If I plug the pieces together in a workable machine it doesn't mean I've made a CPU, even if I've painted the box myself. Note the name is Ubuntu, not "Ubuntu OS." Debian and not "Debian OS." I wouldn't have problem if the product is just named "Elementary" and described as a Linux based OS distribution, once they have a release policy (before it's just a Linux based release). Having OS in the name means a new OS, and it simply and plainly isn't.
      - Kurtz79 13y ago
        I'm not sure I agree. I could be said that "Windows", "OSX", "GNU/Linux" are not really "Operating Systems", intended as software products that you can install on a machine. Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 and yes, Elementary, are. You don't download a specific "GNU/Linux" OS, you download an OS (intended as a software product made up of kernel+file system+desktop environment) that is based on that technology. The word "distribution" is something that was created for Linux given its specific nature. Yes, if we stick to the classic CS definition of OS maybe you are right, but I believe that Ubuntu, Debian and Elementary can rightfully call themselves "OS"s without issue.
        acqq 13y ago
        Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 are all specific releases, not the new operating systems. Elementary isn't, too. It is not even a distro until it has clear release and update policies. Otherwise you'd consider any skinned ISO of any existing OS a new OS, and that's just wrong. "Hello all, I'm making one new OS in my basement every week!"
- jerryr 13y ago
  Throwing around "OS" used to bug me too. Even Android runs on top of Linux. So, is Android really an OS? A distribution? It seems like something more than a distribution--Android contributes drivers and patches to the kernel. But it's still Linux under there. I finally stopped caring and accepted that "OS" has evolved for most end users to mean a user experience, an ecosystem of applications, a hardware support list, and a technical support strategy. For many developers, it's now the set of tools, services, and paradigms available for development along with an understanding of the number and types of users that can be reached by supporting it. These definitions span the classical distinctions between Operating System, distribution, and even sometimes application. In my line of work, I can communicate clearly with the majority of my customers by referring to things like Android and eOS as "OSes". It's what they expect and I'm okay with that. Congrats on the launch of Luna.
  - acqq 13y ago
    They use it like OSX and iOS which rightly have OS in their name: both are the new and original operating systems. Debian, Ubuntu rightly don't have OS in their own names. Elementary shouldn't too.
    - arjie 13y ago
      Poor choice of examples, mate. From the respective home pages: 1. "Ubuntu is the world’s favourite free operating system" - ubuntu.com 2. "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run." - debian.org Then you have CentOS and their ilk. But that whole argument is irrelevant: take a step back and look at what you're arguing about. It is such a petty argument. I feel like I'm living in a crazy house where trivial things are important.
    - neeee 13y ago
      OS X is a distribution of Darwin. iOS is derived from it.
- subway 13y ago
  What was the motivation behind forking the distro rather than building packages and an apt repo for Debian or Ubuntu? This is certainly a neat desktop environment, but it always makes me sad to see things done in a manner that makes it difficult to use with other distros.
  - aroman 13y ago
    Money, time, and experience. All of these things have changed since over the past year or so, and there's been a lot of internal discussion about moving to Debian. In fact, it's almost sure to happen for Isis+1 (Isis is the name of our next release). Basically, setting up our own repo took really good packagers (we have them now, and you can also get pretty much all of our software from Gentoo and Arch), running our own repo required a solid and cost-effective server (we have this now), and forking let us inherit a LOT of stuff we didn't have the resources to customize back then. As we grow, it seems only natural that we base less on Ubuntu. But a lot of us used to be Ubuntu developers/enthusiasts, and a bunch of us have good ties to the Ubuntu ecosystem (a number of us met up at UDS-O), etc. So, tl;dr, it will happen soon enough :)
    - happy-dude 13y ago
      I must give you a heads up about moving over to Debian: currently, Debian installers do not have the option to format or install onto a BTRFS partition. (Nor does Fedora's installer, without difficulty. Ubuntu's does though.) This matters to me because I was recently checking out an interesting installation method that allowed me to do away with Linux partitions by solely using BTRFS subvolumes. (If you look at the IRC chat logs of #btrfs, #archlinux-newbie, and #elementary, I was btrfs-newbie trying it a few days back.) As of now, I am nearly done with my laptop set up, and I am happily running Arch Linux and elementaryOS with a shared /home subvolume all under the same BTRFS partition. This is a really neat feature that I could take advantage of in the Ubuntu installer (Ubiquity, was it?). I did not have this issue on Arch because Arch's installation method was practically a chroot and create the filesystem and package structure in the proper places. Please keep this in mind when moving forward. It would be interesting if you can maintain that aspect in your next release, Isis. Thanks so much for your time, and keep up the amazing work!
macco 13y ago
What you saying is just. End users donwload operating systems and the know what a distro is. Who are you, to define what a operating system is?
kunai 13y ago
"Apple. How can they name their mostly API-level visual customizations of the existing projects "OS X" and be accepted as serious? Such things were called skins and themes. What is really original there apart from the visual design elements and the UI customizations to allow them calling their contribution an "OS"? Just that they actually write some code? Where are their own kernel and their own drivers? Aren't they just a derivative BSD/Mach distro?"
- acqq 13y ago
  If you ever looked at Darwin and compared it with any other kernel, you'd know it's a serious, big real OS work, far from any "UI" you mention. Reading what you wrote, however, I don't believe you did something like that, or even that you'd be able to. I see there's no point arguing in such case.
  - kunai 13y ago
    Darwin was created using portions of FreeBSD's kernel and the work done for Mach at Carnegie Mellon. It's not Apple's sole creation in the slightest.
  - SkyMarshal 13y ago
    That's how OS X is now, after ~10 years of closed development. When it first started it was open source FreeBSD and Mach. I even remember the FOSS community's disappointment when Apple close sourced the project. Who knows how eOS will look in ten years, and the state of OS X now is certainly no basis for criticism of brand new OS.

cransa 13y ago

Elementary OS looks like a OS X knock off. Which is a shame, in my opinion. They say they reached the same conclusion as Apple's designers, but I think they just have a bias. They should be taking inspiration from apps like Fantastical, Soulver, etc. and building in those concepts to the O.S. They should try and set themselves apart from OS X. It just looks too similar. Remember what Picasa said: "Good artist copy. Great artist steal." Elementary OS is just copying. They should be stealing. I'd love to see something along the lines of this Dribbble shot, honestly. http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-Concept/attachments/44311 http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI-Concept/attachme...

foolrush 13y ago
While I agree with your premise that Elementary is nothing more than a repetitive clone of a well trodden trope, I could not disagree more with the "steal" aspect. Instead, I would suggest that any further designs should drop the privileged terms of "intuitive" and other such rubbish[1] and instead focus on designing a system that specifically meets the needs of a very particular demographic / audience. Finally, there is little to no evidence to suggest that Picasso said that infamous line. It was likely misattributed by Mr. Jobs from a biography. It is instead a mangling of the words of T.S. Eliot[2] that seriously detracts from Eliot's original (and relevant to this discourse) intention. [1] http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-metaphor http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-metaphor [2] http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-poets-steal/ http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borro...

tuananh 13y ago

For those saying Elementary OS isn't a blatant copy of OS X. Just look at those icons in the dock.

SkyMarshal 13y ago
"Good artists copy, great artists steal." So by Steve Jobs (and Picasso's) own definition, the eOS guys are merely good, not yet great. They've still got some catching up to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU
- kunai 13y ago
  That quote isn't actually Picasso's. It's T.S. Eliot's, and it goes, "Good poets borrow, great poets steal."
  - graue 13y ago
    That's not quite what Eliot said either. From elsewhere in this thread, 'foolrush points to this: http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great-poets-steal/ http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borro...
- tuananh 13y ago
  mere copying: i called theft.

mixmastamyk 13y ago

I like the idea of a new competitor in this space, however I was a bit disappointed in their direction. Not sure of others but I don't need another gnome3-like (dumbed-down, grandma-friendly, immature paradigm, rather be a tablet) interface. These linux-based desktops will never be popular; that ship sailed long ago. However, I desperately need a professional, stable, feature-complete, mostly bug-free workstation GUI with modern capabilities at least as good as Win2000/XP, Irix, NeXT like I had 10+ years ago. Something like Xfce polished to OSX-level quality. If one of the design-goals is that "menus are too difficult" there is no market available for that product. The people that would benefit use Windows, OSX, iOS, and Android already.

tikhonj 13y ago
It seems like KDE already handles your needs: it's well-integrated, stable and has all the modern capabilities you could want. Certainly far better than XP! I've used KDE a fair bit, and the recent versions have been superb. Sure, it's heavyweight compared to some of its bare-bones competitors, but that's the only way to fulfill all your conditions. Of course, the truly "professional" choice would be XMonad layered over something minimal. But that's a different discussion for a different time :P.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  It would seem so. Unfortunately, I've given it a try every other year and have been disgusted every time. The technology is nice, but it feels like it was designed by 90's IT guy. Clutter and programmer-art is not what I am looking for either.
- bobjor 13y ago
  KDE at least the versions I have used have a bunch of little annoyances that just break usage for me. Mostly having to do with things like KWallet integration or other little pieces not working properly. I've used workstations that still run Windows 95/2000 for machines and they work great but KDE 4 leaves me missing its 3.x variant. XFCE could probably be a viable replacement though, it is familiar and easy to use it just has its little gotchas as well (which are more annoying on a laptop than a desktop though).

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

MWil 13y ago

I emailed support a question and never received a reply back. Using Geary, once deleted/archived, emails almost always come back. Sometimes, they come back after several attempts.

aroman 13y ago
Hi, I'm on the elementary team. I'm not sure how exactly you "emailed support" because we don't have a support email address, but I would encourage you to check out our support landing page here: http://elementaryos.org/support http://elementaryos.org/support and specifically search/ask a question here: http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest If nobody seems to have a conclusive answer for you (mind you, Geary is not an app we wrote in house, so there's liable to be less Geary developers hanging around our support channels), I'd ask you (on behalf of the community) to report a bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary Thanks :)

joleX 13y ago

It's a really cool OS. The only thing I don't like is that they force their own applications. I always install Firefox and Thunderbird, and then it's a real thing.

quarterto 13y ago
So installing something by default is forcing it on people now? It's still Linux.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Myrth 13y ago
  > So installing something by default is forcing it on people now? Only for Microsoft.

MisterWebz 13y ago

A lot of people here fervently complaining about eOS again. The most important thing is that there's finally a linux distro with a team behind it that really cares about design. I think it's a huge step forward, and when eOS gains in popularity, I hope other teams follow in their footsteps. No, distros like Linux Mint aren't the right way forward. Stripping off everything until what you have left is a taskbar isn't exactly my idea of good design.

SkyMarshal 13y ago
Completely agree. Their focus on design as all of how-it-looks, how-it-works, and performance-is-a-feature is very promising for a Linux Desktop, as are the hard work and sacrifices they're willing to go to get that - rewriting everything in Vala and GTK3 namely. Their app-data-sharing component, Contractor, is also interesting. I've had at least one idea I wanted to try in the past but couldn't figure out how to implement it b/c apps are not aware of other running apps. I wonder if Contractor will make that possible. These guys have created a really strong base to build upon, and appear to be innovative problem solvers. They're also tuned into the problems of power users, referencing the whole Gnome2/3 brouhaha. Really looking forward to seeing how this develops, and to it getting to a point I can completely replace Ubuntu desktop with it.
mmastrac 13y ago
I'm glad to see that the top comment is a positive one. I haven't personally used eOS, but I'm also glad to see they are focused on usability and design. I switched from a decade of Linux to OSX a few years ago and have been pretty happy with my choice - OSX is unix-y enough, and tends to just get out of the way when necessary (some of Apple's more recent Gatekeeper changes withstanding). In the meantime, I'm disappointed that Hacker News commenters continue to bring out constant negativity against new projects. What happened to original HN ethos that celebrated people _doing things_? Seriously: if you feel like you have to complain about somebody's hard work, try being constructive and giving feedback, or not commenting and just doing it better instead.
pekk 13y ago
"Cares about design" implies that there is one optimal design for everything (perhaps Apple's). But a lot of design is very subjective. Actually there are multiple distros which care about design, but they have different ideas about what to try to optimize for.

aroman 13y ago

As much as it brightens my day to see a project I worked on (I'm actually the guy who filmed that video in the article) make it to HN's front page, it also makes me sad a bit. It makes me sad because of the usual troupe of folks who complain that we don't have the right to go around calling ourselves an "OS", we don't bring anything original or innovative into the world, or that we are plainly just OS X clones. I was extremely active on the thread[0] posted to HN when Luna launched (which was at #1 for the better part of that evening), but I don't think I'm going to do that same level of in depth responding here. Instead, I'm simply going to leave you a link to the below article[0]. Please read my comment if you want to understand how we as elementary evaluate and understand our design process and the criticism which seems to come with it. Thanks for listening. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148

SkyMarshal 13y ago
I can't imagine that people making those silly comments have 1) RTFA, or 2) done anything remotely like what you guys are doing. You guys are doing some amazing things with the Linux desktop, don't let the peanut gallery get you down. PS - I fervently hate the word "exciting" and think it is by far the most overused and diluted word in contemporary US English these days, at least in the business and startup realm. Too many people seem to think that calling something "exciting" actually makes it so, and call everything they want investment or traction for "exciting". Almost none of it actually is. eOS is one of the few exceptions. The first project I've seen where reading your blog posts about it feels like reading folklore.org, and for a Linux fan at least, truly is exciting. So please keep doing what you're doing, ignore the negative nancies.
agumonkey 13y ago
I have yet to test it, but having seen the video, "haters" probably lack knowledge about desktops, user interface or simply history (how many desktop systems have been made that lacked the integration, speed and polish ?). Hoping you don't take it too hard and keep on experimenting and growing.
macco 13y ago
You should simply be proud, to have this endurance, to bring Luna to the masses. I don't agree on everything you did, but I really appreciate what you did. And you design consideration about how applications should interact with the users are ground breaking - at least a bit. Sending minimize to hell is a smart move. Kudos

phpnode 13y ago

sickening to see the negativity here, I just bought a copy because this thing looks great and because I want to support the team.

lists 13y ago

Why do you guys make a big deal of Contractor in the article when actual development of the service is rather neglected looking at your milestones for your next release's beta[0] and Contractor's revision history[1]? On your mailing list you guys are already getting ready to update your Ubuntu Precise base to a more recent release[2], but why? Precise is stable and will be continue to be so long enough for you guys to spend time developing the developer-facing treasures of your platform, and yet it seems you're a little too focused on user-facing niceties. Or maybe the better question is when will you guys sit down and start making the stuff that'll entice third-party developers? Let me know if I'm getting things confused, I'm actually a big fan of the project. [0]: https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-beta1 https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-beta1 [1]: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor-dev/contractor/trunk/changes http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor-dev/contractor/trunk... [2]: https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-community/msg02577.html https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-community/msg0257...

munchor 13y ago
Hi, I'm one of the devs. Regarding Contractor, its big proponent is on vacations and we still need to move some of the blueprints about it to the appropriated milestones. In fact, we still have to report many bugs about it, but in time I'm sure it'll be done. Regarding the new release, we get a lot of criticism from all kinds of users saying they want us to be based on a more modern version of Ubuntu and as so, we plan to be based on 14.04 for next release. We aim to release shortly after Ubuntu 14.04 comes out and that's the plan we're sticking to. I'm sure 14.04 will be just as stable, we can't be stuck in the past and moving is a lot of work - we need to start working on it as soon as possible! Besides, we also need many new GTK+, Vala and other libraries' features.

sremani 13y ago

Even though the comparisions to OS X seem inevitable due to the launch bar, I like the snappiness of the OS, and one of the few distros I felt playing around. I am a primary windows user, who tinkers and plays around with Linux and OS X, I definitely like the OS. My wireless drivers being proprietary could not work with Luna, so as much as I want to have Luna - I could not use on the old laptop, but I will definitely consider installing it on my VM. Crunchbang and Luna are the distros I am liking.